Skyscraper

by Faith Baldwin

  “Pretty gay crowd,” said the announcer, and looked around the screen.

  Tom looked too. The room was well filled, they were dancing, the management had provided favors.

  “Swell music,” Tom agreed, tapping his foot and shrugging a shoulder.

  “Let’s get going,” suggested the announcer. “Hey, what’s the big idea?” he asked, in amazement.

  Tom had seen Lynn. At a corner table with Dwight. Her hand lay on the table. Dwight’s covered it. He was leaning close, speaking to her, low, eagerly.

  She was listening. Once she spoke. Once she nodded and smiled. Once she was very grave, shaking her dark head.

  “My God!” said Tom aloud.

  “Come on,” urged the announcer impatiently. “Have you taken root?”

  After a moment Tom stumbled after the other man, out into the wide sleeping gardens, where a light snow was falling where the lanterns swayed in the wind, and those, whose little light had survived, bloomed like immense enchanted and every unseasonable flowers against the drifting flakes and the dark, unstarred sky.

  DWIGHT HAD BEEN saying, back there, in the noisy room, “But you must have know always that I loved you, Lynn. I’ve come to an agreement with—Mrs. Dwight. She will set me free. She’s abroad now, we’ll run it through, routine fashion, in Paris. And I’ll come back for you? Or would you join me there—in the late spring? We could be married in England. You’ve never known an English spring, have you? It’s very lovely.”

  She said slowly, “I don’t love you.”

  “But you like me?”

  This is where she nodded and smiled a little. She said, “I like you very much. But—”

  “Darling, you’ll love me. You must. I want you so much,”he told her, “and I—need you.”

  She made a curious little gesture, with her free hand, bewildered. She shook her head.

  “But why—me?” she wanted to know. “It seems—so strange. All the people you’ve known—the women—”

  “I’ve never known any,” he said, and believed it; “not since life began. There is only you. No one else has ever existed.”

  Tom had gone from her. Tom no longer cared or he would have returned to her before this. She did not know how near he was now, behind the screen, staring at her. She had no warning, no premonition. She felt tired, suddenly, of unhappiness and of struggle. But—David Dwight?

  “Don’t answer now,” he said quickly, very quickly. “I’ll wait. You needn’t say anything now. Look up, smile. I’ll not speak of it again until you’re ready. Shall we dance?” he asked.

  Tom saw them rise, saw her go into his arms, before he left.

  Tom’s duties for the evening were over. He went straight to Lynn’s apartment house and was announced to Sarah. She was home, as it happened, and alone. She opened the door to him herself. He came in, shaking the wet snow from his overcoat.

  “Why, Tom!” she said, astonished.

  It was late. She was ready, she had thought, to go to bed. To rest, not to sleep. She had not slept well recently.

  “I had to see you. I’ve just come from a roadhouse, out Yonkers way. I saw Lynn there. With—Dwight. He was holding her hand across the table, looking as if he could eat her up—What does this mean, Sarah?” Tom demanded.

  Sarah sat down in the nearest chair. She admitted after a moment, “I don’t know—”

  Tom said, standing over her, “She belongs to me. She knows it. What is she doing with—him?”

  Sarah asked a question in her turn. “What has happened between you? Tell me, you must tell me, Tom, if I’m to help you.”

  He sat down, facing her, and told her briefly, in his boyish speech. When he had finished he repeated, through her long silence, “I didn’t do it. She just jumped at the conclusion. Didn’t give me a chance. I could produce Rawlson, of course.”

  “Rawlson knew?”

  “Sure, he suggested it,” Tom said, astonished, “in the first place.”

  Sarah was remembering. Dwight’s question. Her answer, abstractedly given. She had seen Dwight and Bob Rawlson talking one day, on the main banking floor in a corner apart.

  Dwight had done very well lately. She had heard he was going abroad, was, for a little space, retiring, on a long vacation. He had even said it to her carelessly, “I rate a vacation, do I not?”

  But how on earth had Dwight first stumbled across Rawlson’s path?

  She asked Tom suddenly, “Do you know where Bob Rawlson lives—at home, I mean?”

  “Why, yes,” he answered, “it isn’t far from here. Why?”

  “Go there,” ordered Sarah, “now, this instant! Never mind how late it is. Make him tell you to whom he has talked—recently. Force him to. You won’t have to use much persuasion. After all, he approached you first. But find out.”

  “But—Lynn?” he asked. “Sarah, I’m nearly crazy. If you could have seen them—I—I damned near went in there and dragged her away from him. I—you know how I feel about her. I’ve been a fool, keeping away out of pride, stubbornness, call it anything you want. If only I’d come back, made her listen to me, brought Bob to see her, if necessary! But I couldn’t understand—it seemed an awfully small thing to come between us. Even,” he said defiantly, “even if I had done it.”

  “It wouldn’t be small to Lynn. But you didn’t do it. I’ll talk to Lynn. Go now and see if you can find Rawlson, tonight. Leave it to me,” said Sarah, and rose, tall, erect, a little white.

  Somehow he knew he could trust her. He left and went out to find Bob Rawlson.

  Sarah went downstairs and spoke to the superintendent, who knew her close intimacy with Lynn. She had, she told him, an urgent message to give to the younger woman. She would rather not telephone it but would prefer to wait in Lynn’s room until she came in. Incurious, the superintendent admitted her.

  She waited there, through the longest hours of her life. No, not the longest; she recalled those others; she had to.

  Would Lynn come in alone?

  As it happened, she did not. The car drew up at the door, shortly after one o’clock. The longest night had not been, after all, so long. They had dined late, lingered to dance—and talk. Tom had been in the inn from 8:30 until 9:15 and had come directly to Sarah’s apartment.

  “May I come in, just for a moment?” Dwight asked outside the door. “You know, I’ve never seen your place.”

  Lynn had her hand on the knob. “Why, it’s open,” she exclaimed in astonishment. “No, of course you can’t come in,” she answered.

  “If it’s open, I must,” he answered. “Suppose the place has been broken into or something?”

  “But that’s nonsense! Still, I’m sure I shut the door.”

  Sarah listened, waiting.

  Dwight turned the knob, the door swung. He stepped into the room, saying, over his shoulder, “Wait out there a moment, darling—”

  Then—“Sarah!” he said, on the heels of that betraying endearment.

  20

  HIS ARMS, HIS KISS

  I WAS WAITING FOR LYNN,” SARAH TOLD HIM. “I didn’t expect you, too.”

  But, inevitably, she had.

  Lynn, close on Dwight’s heels, exclaimed, “Oh, it’s you! When I found the door open I didn’t know what to think—we were afraid someone had broken in.”

  She was flushed, but her eyes were tired. Sarah said evenly, “Shut the door, Lynn, and come inside. This is a curious hour for me to be calling.” She tried to smile, failed, and went on, “But I had something to speak to you about, something important. McHiggin let me in—”

  “I’ll go,” Dwight offered hastily, conscious of a growing discomfort. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Lynn.” Easier to let him go; easier to say what she had to say, to Lynn’s ears alone. But—

  “I’d rather you stayed,” she said steadily, “for it concerns you, David.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “My dear Sarah, what can possibly concern me?”

  “Sarah, dear, what is it?” She asked.
For a moment her heart had missed a beat—something important—news from home? Bad news? But now she was at rest again, for if it had been news from home it could not have concerned Dwight.

  She touched Sarah’s cheek with her small, cool hand.

  “Sarah—you look so tragic—” she began, ready to be frightened again.

  Dwight stood leaning against the little bookcase. “May I smoke?” he asked, and without waiting for permission, lighted a cigarette. He speculated, his eyes expressionless.

  It was to Dwight that Sarah addressed herself now.

  “Do you remember our conversation this summer, at your house?” she asked directly.

  Indiscretion seemed the better part of valor.

  “Perfectly,” he admitted coolly.

  “Then you must recall that you gave me you word—which you have broken.”

  “Dear Sarah, you embarrass me! Lynn is looking wide-eyed from one to the other of us. It is past one in the morning. Cannot we postpone this interesting chat until another more seasonable—or reasonable—hour?” he inquired.

  “No—Lynn,” she said, turning her white face to the girl beside her, “last summer when we were at David’s I went to him and asked him—”

  “If my intentions towards you were honorable, darling,” Dwight interrupted lightly.

  Lynn colored. “Oh Sarah—” she began, distressed.

  Sarah ignored both interruptions.

  “I asked him what he meant by his attitude toward you. I reminded him that you were engaged to Tom Shepard. He promised me that as long as you remained so he would—”

  “Fade from the picture,” Dwight explained. “And I did. But Lynn’s no longer engaged to young Shepard,” he reminded them both.

  “How do you know?” Sarah asked him simply.

  “She told me so,” he answered, and smiled, a little.

  “But you knew—before she told you. Or else you broke your promise first,” Sarah persisted.

  “Oh, I knew—or guessed.”

  “How—?”

  “One hears these things,” he admitted vaguely.

  “From—Robert Rawlson?”

  Blank amazement. Too well done. A picture flashed into Lynn’s mind: Dwight’s car at the curb, Bob Rawlson walking away from it, into the bank—

  “It was from Bob Rawlson, was it not, that you also obtained information of the probable Seacoast merger with the First Citizens’ organization?” asked Sarah.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he answered shortly.

  Sarah said quietly, “It doesn’t matter, except to Lynn. Lynn quarreled with Tom because she thought that against her express wishes he had sold his confidential information to outsiders. That’s neither here nor there. You know quite well what I’m talking about. Lynn confided in you last summer. You yourself told me so. It would have been singularly easy for you to find and approach the person who had made the original suggestion to Tom, and to learn from him the exact moment when it would be wise—and clever—to buy what stock you could through various investment houses and in small lots.”

  “Then Tom didn’t—” began Lynn. Her face was colorless.

  “No, Tom didn’t. I’m certain of that,” Sarah told her briefly, and turned to Dwight again. “You’ll deny any complicity, of course. Although it was, I supposed, my fault. I haven’t forgotten that you asked me with whom Tom was intimate in the bank; or that I told you, not thinking, young Rawlson.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” he said sharply. “I know Rawlson casually, as Norton’s secretary. That is all.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Sarah again, “although I congratulate you upon your sagacity. It isn’t everyone who does a little business on the side, while managing to separate two young people who care for each other, for his own purposes.”

  “Sarah,” he asked, in a magnificent bewilderment, “what on earth has come over you lately? It’s not like you to take to melodrama.”

  She said shortly, “Never mind that. The fact remains that you’re a married man. And that both of you and Lynn should know better.”

  “I shan’t,” Dwight informed her, “be a married man very long. Or rather, not married to the present Mrs. Dwight.” He waited a moment, and then drove home. He wanted to hurt the woman sitting there, facing him, cool eyes and steady mouth and quiet hands, wanted to hurt her so that she would cry out. “Mrs. Dwight has done me the honor to consent to a divorce,” he said with facetious formality, “and so I have asked Lynn to marry me when my freedom is obtained.”

  “Ah—” said Sarah, very low. She turned to Lynn, after a moment. “Is this true? She asked.

  Lynn spoke, for the first time in several minutes. “Yes, it’s true, Sarah, he did ask me to marry him. But—I don’t understand—about Bob Rawlson and Tom and—”

  “That can wait. Do you love—him?” Sarah urged her, and indicated Dwight.

  “Please, Sarah, this is excessively embarrassing and unnecessary,” Dwight said. He was no longer smiling.

  “No. He knows that. But—oh, Sarah!” Lynn bowed her dark head against the older woman’s shoulder and wept, from bewilderment and fatigue. The broken words she uttered were not clear but one or two of them came, muffled, to Sarah’s ears—“so lonely—so unhappy.” Sarah put her arm around the girl.

  “Because you thought Tom had failed you, you were going to marry David perhaps and be—more lonely, more unhappy?” she asked.

  Lynn replied, “Yes,” faintly. Then she drew away from Sarah and spoke, strongly, distinctly. “Oh,” she said with violence, “I’m so ashamed. It’s been my fault, Sarah, all my fault. You’ll never trust me again. You see, that time in the country, I spoke—to—him”—she indicated Dwight—“about Tom. I told him the whole situation, and asked him if—if what Tom was considering was unethical, dishonest. I felt that it was.” She added, “I ought to lose my job for that, Sarah. I was out of my head, worried about Tom, about the whole business, and—a little drunk, too,” she said defiantly, “not realizing what I was saying—”

  Sarah took her eyes from Dwight’s altered face. She asked, “Lynn, did you mention Bob Rawlson on that occasion?”

  “No. Not by name. I said Tom had an acquaintance who’d advised him.” Her little face was drawn, the black arrow on her forehead was clear against her pallor. For the first time in several crowded moments of realization she looked at Dwight, spoke directly to him, “Why did you do it?” she asked. “Why did you let me think, cause me to think, that Tom—”

  He answered, smiling dimly, “My dear, when I advised you to forget the whole stupid matter didn’t I tell you all’s fair in love and business?”

  She was silent, her lips shaking. Sarah answered for her.

  “Perhaps. But it’s hardly a basis for a happy marriage. You—have never had the ghost of a chance to make Lynn happy, David. You’ve much less now. Even if she had not learned what she’s learning tonight, she would have married you with another man in her heart. You”—she spoke regretfully—“you couldn’t make any woman happy, David, not any more. You’ve lost so much.”

  “What right have you to say that?” he asked violently. “I love Lynn. I can make her happy—I will make her happy. I have never,” he said deliberately, not forgetting to stab, “cared for any woman as I do for her. She’ll forget about this. I’ll make her forget. I tell you I love her, I’d give her the world, if I could!”

  Sarah said, “I suppose so. Yet you told me that once—I remember.”

  There was a deep silence. Lynn cried, raising her face from Sarah’s shoulder—“Sarah?” and Dwight repeated it. “Sarah!” he said, but on a note of warning.

  Sarah said, “Not that that matters any more, either. Why you have mattered to me, David, for twenty years, is beyond my comprehension. But Lynn must know. It may explain things to her, when later she thinks it is all over; may explain why I was so blind, so gullible—”

  “You—and David?” asked Lynn. It was the first time
she had spoken Dwight’s Christian name. He heard it, echoing sweetly, and was able to look toward her with a little, secret gratitude in his brief glance.

  “Yes—I and David.”

  “Twenty years ago,” Dwight reminded Lynn smoothly.

  “You were going to marry him?” asked Lynn of Sarah. “I—why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t know—or dream.”

  “No, there was no question of marriage between us. Dwight couldn’t afford to marry—a nobody,” Sarah told her evenly. “We were—lovers.”

  “An elastic term,” Dwight remarked, hunting for his cigarette case. He was fighting, and he knew it, with his back to the wall.

  “Not very. Not in this case. Shall I tell her about Maryland, David, and the place called Heartsease? Shall I tell her about the apartment, here in New York? —”

  “No, no,” cried Lynn suddenly. Childishly, her hands were at her ears. “No, don’t tell me—anything more!”

  “But I think I must,” Sarah said.

  “No, it—isn’t necessary.” Lynn found herself on her feet, standing and facing Dwight. “Why?” she asked, and again, “Why?”

  He said soothingly, as one speaks to a child, “Darling, you would never have known, from me. What Sarah’s motive is—” He shrugged. But he knew her motive. He said, “Don’t look at me like that. It happened to long ago—it was over, so long ago. We were young and lonely and—”

  “But—Sarah?” She couldn’t understand it, couldn’t reconcile it. Sarah, her mother’s friend, Sarah who had taken her in, given her her chance, been kinder to her than Heaven. She said brokenly, “If it had been anyone else but—Sarah—I wouldn’t have cared, why should I? I’m not, after all, a child.” Nor was she; at that moment she was entirely adult. “But to treat Sarah—like that!” She turned from him definitely, went down on her knees by the side of Sarah’s chair and looked up into a face that was no longer calm, into eyes no longer steady. “It must have hurt you terribly to tell me. I—oh, Sarah, how could he?”